unique records

[lounsbud]

Hello to all and thanks in advance for any help.

I am a teacher who is in charge of sign up for a computer lab in our school. In the past, this has been done with a FMP DB which listed dates and periods as a single record. Teachers would look up a date and if it was available, e-mail me to put them in. This seemed like lots of work for me but I didn't know how to make the DB open to add records with out also giving teacher the ability to edit a particular record. Further I could not force the date field to be unique because maybe Mr. Smith wants a lab 1st period but Mr. Jones needs it for the same date but 2nd period.

So I have changed my approach, I have a new DB where a teacher may enter their name, date, and period in a single record. My question is this: how can I make sure that the combination of the date field and the period field is unique? I would like teachers to input new records but if the date and period already exists in the DB to not allow entry. I hope this all makes sense...

Thanks again in advance and I hope someone has some ideas. I am new to the advanced functions of FMP but have been using most of the basics for years.

[dspires]

You can use a new layout called 'draft' and a field called validated. The teachers create a new record in the draft layout with date and period, with the validated field auto-entered to 'no'. They then push a button that runs a script that searches the database for a duplicate entry. If the period is avalable, change the validated field to 'yes' and go to another layout (with non-modifiable period/date fields), if not display a message that the time isn't available.

[LiveOak]

There are some neat ways to create a graphical display of a calendar using relationships. Steve at Ocean West (our host for FMFORUMS) has done a complete dispatch scheduling application based upon this approach. Unfortunately, it is not a three sentence description. Definitely for the experienced developer. -bd

[lounsbud]

Thanks to both of you.

dspires, how about some help with the script? Or where is a good place to start looking. I have never done a script but have always wanted to learn...